The present invention relates to the field of model driven architecture and, more particularly, to enabling synchronicity between architectural models and operating environments.
Traditionally, operation centers (OCs) run and manage an enterprise environment through a plethora of management tool dashboards. These dashboards are often built and updated via rules based discovery processes on the actual environment. Typically, the OC team can view the environment as a reflection of the “running” operational environment and the assets contained within the environment. The OC can group assets based on asset types, geography, lines of business, network connections, grid location, security zones, etc. Measurements (e.g., metrics) can be gathered on these assets and recorded for availability, capacity, and/or service level management. The OC can observe and manage (e.g., via one or more dashboards) the operational state of an environment based on operational measurements
Today's enterprise architects spend a great deal of time creating and perfecting solution design architectures based on business requirements and strategy. Architects often create Enterprise Architectures documenting their software, hardware, and other enterprise standards. These requirements, strategy, and standards provide constraints which drive functional and nonfunctional requirements for a particular solution to operate successfully within the enterprise. These requirements also drive use cases which in turn drive components and service models all the way to the operational model nodes and deployment units.
This documentation unfortunately becomes “throw-away” architecture work once a system is deployed because typically the architect or the design documents are no longer involved when the system is handled by IT operations. IT operations frequently have IT specific documenting and views of the environment. For example, typically only Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements are carried over from the design as a part of the operational documentation. Even rigorous change control rarely returns to the design documents for verification, guidance, and direction. This can lead to a divergence between the IT operational environment and the originally designed solution architecture. Further, this divergence can create a lack of focus for updates and change control. It also virtually eliminates any effective feedback loop from design to implementation as well as the original design architects and IT Operations.